THE CLASH OF CULTURES
AMERICANS HAVE A HARD TIME understanding why Islamic extremists hate us so much. After all, America has often reached out to Muslim people in a spirit of friendship and has defended Muslims from attacks and oppression. America helped arm the mujahideen (“army of jihadists”) against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. America defended Bosnian Muslims against genocidal attacks by Serbs in the former Yugoslavia, and we defended ethnic Albanians against Serbian genocide in Kosovo. We liberated Kuwait and Iraq from the tyrannical regime of Saddam Hussein. America and its NATO allies helped liberate Libya from Muammar Gaddafi.
In spite of all the blood and treasure America has sacrificed to defend Muslims, the Islamists still want to do us harm. They don’t just hate our government. They hate us—and for a variety of reasons. They remember how Western nations colonized and exploited the Arab world. They believe America’s economic success is the result of greed and political oppression. They hate America’s support for Israel. They hate the immorality in our entertainment media.
Osama bin Laden once described the conflict between Islam and the West as a war of true faith versus unbelief:
Our call is the call of Islam that was revealed to Muhammad. It is a call to all mankind. We have been entrusted with good cause to follow in the footsteps of the Messenger [Muhammad] and to communicate his message to all nations. It is an invitation that we extend to all the nations to embrace Islam, the religion that calls for justice, mercy and fraternity among all nations…. We are entrusted to spread this message and to extend that call to all the people. We, nonetheless, fight against their governments and all those who approve of the injustice they practice against us. We fight the governments that are bent on attacking our religion and on stealing our wealth and on hurting our feelings.1
Islam currently boasts about 1.6 billion adherents and is spreading faster than at any other time in history. It is the dominant religion in forty-nine nations.2 Its spread has encouraged the rise of militant, political Islam—the original Islam of the seventh century.
Militant Islamists hate everything Christians stand for. They hate our freedom. They hate the gospel, which is blasphemy to them. The notion of a tolerant society that guarantees religious liberty is alien to their way of thinking, because they seek to bring the world into submission to Sharia law.
Militant Islamists view Christianity as the foremost foe of Islam for four basic reasons:
1. Islamists see Christianity as the primary expression of infidel wickedness. They mistakenly assume that Christian values pervade Western civilization the way Islamic ideology pervades the Muslim world. They don’t understand the secularization and pluralism of Western society. So when Muslims see the immorality of Hollywood films, they blame Christianity.
2. Because of the history of the Crusades, Islamic extremists see Christianity as the most potent ideological threat they face. If Islam can conquer Christianity, they reason, then all of Islam’s other foes can be readily defeated.
3. Though Muslims regard Christianity as a potent enemy, they view individual Christians as soft, passive targets. They interpret our tolerance as a weakness that they can exploit to subjugate us. Westerners reinforce this impression by refusing to defend our culture.
4. Islamists blame the Christian West for many of the social ills of the Middle East, including poverty, ignorance, unrest, and oppression. They blame the West for corrupting Muslim culture with immoral movies and attire. And they blame the West for supporting Israel.
Violence-inclined Muslims find support in the Quran, which teaches, “Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day” (Quran 9:29), kill unbelievers who do not offer you peace—“slay them wherever ye catch them” (Quran 2:191; 4:91), and “take not the Jews and the Christians for your friends” (Quran 5:51). The Quran also says that Jews and Christians believe in idols and false worship (Quran 4:51), that Allah will not forgive those who believe in the Trinity (Quran 4:48; 28:62–64), and that Christians—those who believe that Jesus is God—will burn in hell (Quran 5:72). The Quran says that Christians are doomed to destruction for believing that Jesus is the Son of God (Quran 9:30; 19:35–37).
Western civilization was founded on Judeo-Christian beliefs. There is an unbridgeable gulf between those who embrace the faith of the Old and New Testaments and those who embrace, literally and fanatically, the most violent passages of the Quran. Political Islam and Sharia law do not permit coexistence with any other belief system, and especially not Judaism or Christianity.
Today, there is a clash between the cultures of the Christian West and the Islamic East that can be traced all the way back to the era of Islam’s founder, Muhammad. Islamists have revived all the old hostilities, and they are at war against “Crusaders” and “infidels.”
In a real sense, this culture clash can be traced long before the birth of Christ—to the time of the first patriarch, Abraham.
WAITING FOR THE NEW JERUSALEM
The story of Abraham begins in Genesis 11. He was born the son of a Chaldean man named Terah, who named him Abram. Joshua 24:2 tells us, “Terah the father of Abraham and Nahor, lived beyond the Euphrates River and worshiped other gods.”
Some Bible scholars believe that, in his early life, Abram was an idolater like his father and that he converted to faith in the one true God when the Lord called him in Genesis 12. Other Bible scholars believe that Abram may have rejected his father’s idolatrous beliefs and followed God from an early age—and God honored his faith by calling him into a new land. The Bible is silent on whether or not Abram (later renamed Abraham) followed God from an early age or was converted when God called him.
Abraham’s home city, Ur, was located in the region we now know as southern Iraq, on the Euphrates River, about ten miles from the modern city of Nasiriyah. Ur was the center of worship of the Assyrian-Babylonian moon god known as Nanna. You can still visit the ruins of Ur today, including the partially restored ruins of the great Ziggurat of Ur, the shrine to the god Nanna. When Abraham departed from Ur, he left the center of pagan moon god worship to follow the one true God.
Ur was also the cultural and commercial center of the Mesopotamian world in Abraham’s time. It was a highly advanced city with schools, libraries, and marketplaces. It was much like the culturally advanced Western world we live in today. It was the epitome of the City of Man in that era.
But Abraham did not want to be a part of the City of Man, no matter how much wealth, entertainment, and worldly enlightenment Ur had to offer. Abram married Sarai, and along with Abram’s father, Terah, and nephew Lot, he left the city of Ur in the land of the Chaldeans and set off for Canaan. They stopped at a place called Harran and stayed for a while. After Abram’s father died, God told Abram:
“Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.
“I will make you into a great nation,
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you.” (Genesis 12:1–3)
So Abram set off for the promised land. He was seventy-five years old when he left Harran. When Abram reached the great tree of Moreh at Shechem, God appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land” (v. 7). So Abram built an altar to the Lord at that place. From there he went on to the hills east of Bethel, and he built an altar to God and called upon the name of the Lord.
The New Testament writer to the Hebrews offers an insight from the life of Abraham that applies to your life and mine:
By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God. (Hebrews 11:8–10)
Abraham knew what it was like to be caught in a clash of cultures. He was born into the idolatrous Chaldean culture, and his own father was an idol worshipper. Yet God reached into the life of this man Abraham, and he called Abraham out of that rebellious and ungodly culture with its false religious system. Though Abraham loved and respected his father, he would not go along with his father’s idolatry. He remained until his father’s death—and then he was free to go wherever God led him.
So Abraham made his way into the land of Canaan—and there, just as in Ur of the Chaldeans, Abraham encountered foreign cultures that practiced false religions. By faith, Abraham made his home in the promised land—but he didn’t pour a concrete foundation and put up a permanent house. Instead, he sojourned in the promised land, like a stranger in a strange land. Abraham and his family lived in tents, and they were always ready to pack up and leave at a moment’s notice. He knew that his descendants would be heirs of the promise God gave him, but Abraham himself would have to wait for a city with permanent foundations—a city “whose architect and builder is God” (Hebrews 11:10).
Abraham had to wait for the coming of the New Jerusalem. In fact, Abraham is still waiting for the New Jerusalem. God’s Eternal City still lies in our future. Like Abraham, we await the arrival of the city whose architect and builder is God. And like Abraham, we live like strangers in a strange land. We know that this world is not our true home, so, for the time being, we are living as sojourners, in tents.
The hardest, most trying times of all are times of waiting. And this present time of waiting is made all the harder because we are engaged in a great struggle with the surrounding culture. We are caught, like Abraham, in a clash of cultures.
God had called Abraham, and he was looking forward to the City of God, a city with imperishable foundations, whose architect and builder is God Himself. Abraham was willing to spend the rest of his life as a stranger in a strange land, living in tents, waiting for the coming of the true City of God. And waiting. And waiting.
When we are forced to wait on God, year after year, we are tempted to doubt His promises. No one ever experienced a longer wait than Abraham. He was seventy-five years old when God promised he would have a son. He was one hundred when that son, Isaac, was born. So Abraham and his wife, Sarah, who were well into their golden years when the promise was given, waited twenty-five years before the promise of a son was fulfilled.
And Abraham waited the rest of his life for the promised land. He never received the fulfillment of that promise in his lifetime. Yet he never gave up waiting and believing.
There’s an important lesson for you and me in the story of Abraham and his long wait for the fulfillment of God’s promises. Ever since I committed my life to Christ, I have been waiting for the return of the Lord. I may not get to see the Lord’s return with my physical eyes. I may pass through the portal of death before the Lord’s return—but I will never stop waiting and expecting His return.
You may be waiting right now for the Lord to fulfill a promise He has made to you. You may have begun to doubt His promise. You may be ready to simply give up—but please don’t. Keep trusting, expecting, and believing. God always keeps His promises.
GOD ALWAYS KEEPS HIS PROMISES
Adoniram Judson was a brilliant young man. Born in 1788, he entered the College of Rhode Island (now Brown University) at age sixteen and graduated as class valedictorian at nineteen. Raised in a Christian home, he abandoned the Christian faith when an atheist classmate convinced him that God didn’t exist.
A few years later, Judson was spending the night in a country inn—but the loud cries and moans of a sick man in the next room kept him awake through the night. The next morning, Judson went out to speak to the innkeeper and learned that the man in the next room had died. Judson was astonished to learn the identity of the dead man: it was the atheist classmate who had turned Judson away from his faith.
Adoniram Judson knew that it could not have been a random coincidence. God had deliberately placed him in the room next to the dying man—and Judson knew that God was trying to get his attention. So Judson dedicated himself to serving Christ for the rest of his life. He felt God calling him to be a missionary in Burma.
Judson and his wife arrived in Rangoon, Burma, in 1813. During his first seven years in that country, Judson made only one convert. After eleven years, he had made just eighteen converts—and during that eleventh year, war broke out between England and Burma. The Burmese government arrested Judson on suspicion of espionage. His captors marched him barefoot for miles and imprisoned him, starved him, and tortured him in one of the world’s most notorious prisons. Finally, the Burmese government freed him—but only weeks after his release, his wife died.
Having lost his wife, and feeling he was a failure as a missionary, Judson entered a year of suicidal depression. He was so despondent that he dug a grave next to his jungle hut and imagined himself lying down in the grave and never coming out. But after that terrible year of despondency, Judson began to feel the light of God’s love filtering into his life once more, stirring his passion to share the gospel with the Burmese people.
In 1828, Adoniram Judson met a tribesman named Ko Tha Byu—a notorious murderer and robber. Judson led him to the Lord and baptized him—and Ko Tha Byu became a preacher and evangelist much like the apostle Paul. He took the gospel to his own people and began winning souls by the dozen.
It turned out that this Burmese tribe had a number of legends that were remarkably similar to the stories of the Old Testament. They believed in one eternal, omnipotent God, the Creator of the heavens and the earth. They had a legend that was remarkably similar to the story of Adam and Eve. They believed in a coming Messiah. They were well prepared to receive the gospel of Jesus Christ.
So this former murderer and robber—Adoniram Judson’s only convert in that tribe—became a tireless evangelist and church planter. By the time Ko Tha Byu died in 1840, there were more than twelve hundred Christians in his tribe. The tribal church continued to grow long after his death.
Adoniram Judson came close to giving up on God’s promise—but he waited. It was after that terrible year of depression, when Judson was ready to step into a grave and never come out, that God threw open the doors to evangelizing the Burmese tribesmen. Adoniram Judson left an amazing legacy and a profound example for you and me. Whenever God calls you and gives you a promise, trust Him and wait on Him. The God of Abraham, the God of Adoniram Judson, always keeps His Word.
THE CITY NAMED “THE LORD IS THERE”
On a number of occasions, I have led people to Christ, and they have told me through tears, “My dear father, my dear mother, prayed for me and believed that I would one day come to Christ. I wish my parents were still here to see me make this decision. I’m sorry I waited until after they died—it would have given them so much joy to know I made this decision.”
Don’t quit praying for those loved ones who need to know the Lord Jesus. Keep praying, keep trusting God, keep believing—even if you never see your prayers answered in your lifetime. Genuine faith in the promise of God is deaf to doubt. Genuine faith in the promise of God is dumb to discouragement. Genuine faith in the promise of God is blind to impossibilities. Genuine faith refuses to give up or let go.
Abraham left the City of Man and looked forward to the City of God. No matter how many temptations he confronted, no matter how many years of discouragement he endured, he never took his eyes off God’s promise of the City of God. Yes, he was a flawed human being. He sinned. He made mistakes. He tried to rush God’s promise along. But in spite of his flaws, he kept his eyes on God’s promise.
As the world grows darker, as the faith of those around us grows weaker, as our enemies grow stronger, we will be tempted to let go of our faith. We will be tempted to give in to discouragement and self-pity. That is why Paul implores us, “Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things” (Colossians 3:2).
Don’t set your mind on the City of Man. Set your mind on the City of God. Look forward to that divine and eternal city—the same city Abraham waited for. This city is called by many names in the Bible, but I think the sweetest name of all is found in Ezekiel 48:35:
“And the name of the city from that time on will be:
THE LORD IS THERE.”
Of all the great and wonderful things we can know about this heavenly city, the greatest fact of all is that the Lord is there! So let us fix our eyes on this comforting promise, this amazing truth. Faith sees the invisible. Faith hears the inaudible. Faith touches the intangible. Faith accomplishes the impossible. And faith is not just wishful thinking—faith is active.
JERUSALEM—THE CITY OF PEACE
God in His grace has provided an earthly city that foreshadows the City of God. This earthly city is only a temporary provision where God’s name is lifted up, where we sense the promise, yet unfulfilled, of God’s peace here on earth. That is why this earthly city is called Jerusalem, the city of peace.
Though Jerusalem hardly seems like a city of peace today, it is the city where Melchizedek, the king of Salem and priest of El Elyon (“God Most High”), met Abraham with bread and wine and a blessing (Genesis 14:18–20).
That is why Abraham offered all that he had—including his only son of promise, Isaac—to God. According to 2 Chronicles 3:1–2, Mount Moriah, where Abraham was prepared to offer Isaac, is the Temple Mount, where Solomon built the temple of the Lord. And that is why Jesus was offered as a sacrifice in Jerusalem; with His death on the cross, He purchased our peace with God. When King David established Jerusalem as the center of worship for the nation of Israel, Jerusalem became a symbol, a foretaste, of the City of God.
Today, every faithful church, every faithful Sunday school, every faithful home Bible study, and every faithful Christian ministry is to be a place where God is uniquely present, where the Word of God is proclaimed, where the encouragement of God dwells, and where the peace of God reigns. The church on earth is to be a symbol, a foretaste, of the City of God. Like Jerusalem, the church is a temporary city, a foreshadow of the New Jerusalem that is to come.
FROM A CONDITIONAL PROMISE TO UNCONDITIONAL BLESSING
King David was an imperfect king, to say the least. He committed adultery, then tried to cover up his sin with murder. He messed up—royally!
In spite of his sins and his crimes, King David had a deep desire to honor God, to worship God, and to live in the presence of God. Though he failed God, he repented and returned to serving God with all his might for the rest of his life. There’s a lesson in the life of King David for you and me.
If you live in the City of Man, surrounded by its sin and darkness, yet you refuse to surrender to its allure …
If you choose to honor God in the face of all threats and hostility …
If you choose to exercise faith instead of giving in to fear …
If you choose to glorify God with your life, regardless of the cost or the consequences …
If you choose to bless the Lord in a world that curses His name …
… then, just as God overruled the sin of David, He will overrule your failures and sins. If you fail God but return to Him in genuine repentance and brokenness, then like David, you will be remembered as a man or woman after God’s own heart.
The word Zion has often been used as a metaphor for the city of Jerusalem or the nation of Israel or even the believer’s hope of heaven. But Mount Zion in the Old Testament is a specific place, a mountain ridge just south of the Temple Mount. It was the site of the Jebusite fortress that King David conquered and renamed the City of David (2 Samuel 5:6–10; 1 Chronicles 11:4–9). The book of Psalms contains a number of “psalms of Zion,” which include such passages as:
Great is the LORD, and most worthy of praise,
in the city of our God, his holy mountain.
Beautiful in its loftiness,
the joy of the whole earth,
like the heights of Zaphon is Mount Zion,
the city of the Great King.
God is in her citadels;
he has shown himself to be her fortress. (Psalm 48:1–3)
in Israel his name is great.
His tent is in Salem,
his dwelling place in Zion.
There he broke the flashing arrows,
the shields and the swords, the weapons of war. (Psalm 76:1–3)
He has founded his city on the holy mountain.
The LORD loves the gates of Zion
more than all the other dwellings of Jacob.
Glorious things are said of you,
city of God. (Psalm 87:1–3)
Again and again in the Psalms, Mount Zion is portrayed as the City of God, the city where God dwells. To be in Jerusalem, especially in the City of David, was to be in the City of God, in the presence of God. Yet the physical Mount Zion, the historic City of David, was only a foreshadowing of the true City of God, the New Jerusalem, where we will one day live forever, praising God.
Jerusalem was a temporary city, chosen by God’s grace to symbolize and foreshadow the Eternal City of God. Jerusalem was a temporary city protected and sustained by conditional promises. God had promised to keep His hand of protection on that city as long as the people remained faithful to Him.
In Deuteronomy 28, God gave the people of Israel a promise—and a warning. He said:
If you fully obey the LORD your God and carefully follow all his commands I give you today, the LORD your God will set you high above all the nations on earth. All these blessings will come on you and accompany you if you obey the LORD your God….
However, if you do not obey the LORD your God and do not carefully follow all his commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come on you and overtake you…. (Deuteronomy 28:1–2, 15)
God placed before Israel a conditional promise—a blessing and a curse. If the people followed the Lord’s commands, then the nation would be blessed. If the people proved unfaithful and disobedient, then the curses would ensue. And as it turned out, the people wandered from God and brought down the curses upon themselves.
The people repeatedly brought these curses upon themselves during the time of the Judges. And they brought these curses upon themselves again in the Babylonian Exile. Finally, the people of Israel brought these curses upon themselves when they rejected and crucified the promised Messiah. At that moment, earthly Jerusalem ceased to be the city where God dwells. His conditional promise to Israel was, “If you reject Me, I will remove My presence from you.”
That’s why Jesus, shortly before His crucifixion, wept over Jerusalem, saying:
If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you. (Luke 19:42–44)
Jesus wept over Jerusalem and prophesied its destruction. In AD 70, the Romans, led by General Titus, laid siege to the city, broke through the gates, slaughtered the people, razed the temple, and they did not leave one stone upon another. The tearstained prophecy of Jesus was fulfilled to the letter.
In the old Jerusalem, God’s presence was limited and temporary. In the New Jerusalem, He will be eternally omnipresent. In the old Jerusalem, God’s people were prone to wander. In the New Jerusalem, believers will worship Him in spirit and in truth. In the old Jerusalem, the people often turned to worldly pleasures. In the New Jerusalem, God’s people will delight in Him. God’s blessing on earthly Jerusalem was conditional. In the New Jerusalem, God’s blessings will be unconditional, because no conditions will be needed. Thanks to the transforming grace of God, we will be like Jesus.
FOCUS ON THE HEAVENLY CITY
In these times, we live in the City of Man while awaiting the City of God. We are continually tempted to take our eyes off of the promised city that is to come. We are tempted by the lures and enticements of the City of Man. And all too many Christians in all too many churches have succumbed to those enticements, inviting God’s judgment.
I believe that Jesus now weeps over many churches today, as He once wept over the city of Jerusalem. From pulpits where the good news of Jesus Christ was once proclaimed, unfaithful ministers now preach a scandalous tolerance for sin. God will not dwell among people who betray His message and reject His authority.
Great reformers and revivalists, such as John Knox and John and Charles Wesley, founded Christian denominations that once lifted up the name of Jesus above all else. Today those denominations seek friendship with the world. They preach a message designed to soothe the emotions and win popularity contests. They don’t preach about the cross of Christ or the blood of Christ, because that would make people uncomfortable.
So the people who go to those churches no longer hear the gospel—they hear a message of feel-good platitudes designed only to keep the pews warm and the loose change jingling in the collection plates. Those churches are no longer part of the City of God. They have sold out to the City of Man.
Jesus reaffirmed the promise of the City of God when He told the Samaritan woman by Jacob’s well:
A time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth. (John 4:21–24)
A day is coming when those who truly belong to the Lord will worship God not in an earthly city, which is a mere foreshadow, but in the New Jerusalem. That is why Abraham looked ahead to the city whose architect and builder is God. That is why nothing evil or sinful can dwell in it. When we finally dwell with God in that city, we will at last understand what it means for Jesus to be called Immanuel—“God with us” (Matthew 1:23).
Today, living in the City of Man, our vision is dim and our comprehension is clouded. Instead of clinging to God, we run from Him. Instead of remembering His blessings, we forget Him. Instead of listening for His voice, we stop up our ears.
We are continually distracted by the clash of cultures—the clash between the City of God and the City of Man. The City of Man shouts to us from our TVs, radios, computers, and smartphones, from our social media, our entertainment media, our news media, from our neighbors and coworkers, from our opinion leaders and our political leaders—and even, I have to say, from many of our church leaders. The babbling voices of the City of Man distract us from the still, small voice of the Spirit of God.
To hear God’s voice, we may need to turn off our electronic devices and simply listen in prayer and meditation. We may need to withdraw from the clash of cultures so that we can experience the peace and serenity that comes from hearing the voice of God.
In the clash between the City of Man and the City of God, be sure you know which side you’re on. Like Abraham, keep your eyes fixed on the heavenly city with everlasting foundations, whose architect and builder is God.